This popped into my head when learning of the US ban on Andro (Androstenedione) . I was out of the country all during the 'debate' about making it illegal and had to find out about it as a historian might have, by looking through old newspaper clippings (albeit on the Internet) to find out about it long after the fact it was history, and how the 'debate' on it progressed and passed.

            To be fair to myself, I am not advocating that Andro should be legal, nor anything else one might infer from this as yet unwritten article. I only intend to highlight the structural difficultly both with the US thinking itself the Morality Master of the World, and how it can with a single stroke make millions of its citizens criminals overnight, and how its own laws and viewpoints count more than or supersede all international laws combined.

           I understood the arguments why Andro should have been made illegal from the time I was in Canada, while it was legally for sale within the US. Canada, like every other industrial country besides the US has national health insurance. I understood why Canadians thought that they were right to control vitamins and other over-the-counter supplements more than the US does, because their citizens actually have to pay to take care of their other citizens health problems. So they think that they collectively have a right to control what health supplements people can and cannot take which their long term risks to health have not been determined yet.

           The US, while pretending it cares if the majority of its citizens have decent health care or not, really lets things become legal or not depending on which industries give the most bribes, ahem, campaign contributions, and usually sees no qualms about using its population as a giant test case for pharmaceutical industries if the price is right in contributions, especially in behavioral control fields where risks are downplayed. ("Part of the justification for cracking down on andro products is to "protect the children" who are increasingly turning to athletic performance enhancers.And yet, at the same time, the FDA still allows antidepressant drugs to be routinely prescribed to children while at the same time helping cover up evidence that shows such drugs cause children to commit suicide. There's no effort on the part of the FDA to prevent these suicide-promoting drugs from being prescribed. Similarly, there's no effort to take one million children off the narcotics given to them by school counselors and psychiatrists in the form of Ritalin. We're raising a generation of doped up, FDA approved kids in our country, and the only thing the FDA can do about it is ban the nutritional supplements." May 05, 2004 by Mike Adams http://www.newstarget.com/001031.html)

           Because I had been hooked for awhile on Andro, I knew of its positive and potential negative effects more than most. I could see how simply making it illegal would not be enough to get people off the habit, thus making them turn to a no-doubt overnight boom to the black market, and giving a new revenue stream in drug dealers' repertoires. But that does not matter in the least to how it was decided, and conceivably could even have had sway in favor of making it illegal: new illegal items overnight with a built-in user base = more money for organized crime; more cases for lawyers; more control over those who cannot quit or might continue to take it.

           Though I took it regularly, I was bothered by the fact any kid of any age could have bought it at any Walmart. Clearly something should have been done, but making millions of people potential criminals overnight simply by reclassifying an exercise or training supplement into a criminal drug was more than overkill. But there was nothing to stop that overkill other than how much those who manufactured it could have 'bribed' Congress not to do so, the worst way to look at it, but the most honest way to see how the US regulatory system works, based upon the 'contributions' of those they seek to regulate.

The US Bans Aqua

          DP (Disassociated Press) Wire Services- Washington DC

             The United States today made history in following through on its promise to make the color Aqua an illegal color. Though Europe had previously taken the lead in making symbols illegal, not subject to the normal allowances of political or artistic expression, this possibly marks the first time an entire color has been designated as an illegal symbol.

             The color Aqua (a mixture of equal parts of Blue and Green) was not the original thrust of the 'color control' movement. Previously, fundamentalist religious groups within the US had targeted the color Purple, long thought to have had a negative political connotation, especially to children not aware of its subversive contexts.

             Despite making a clear case linking the color Purple not only to homosexuality, but that such links were also being pushed in children's programming subversively via characters such as 'Barney the Dinosaur' and 'Tinky Winky,' the noted pro-homosexual lobby was able to defeat such a move. Powerful left-wing media figures such as Oprah Winfrey were formidable opponents of the move to ban the color Purple. The English and other foreign royalty also lobbied heavily to influence our American Congress to prevent us from banning that morally questionable color.

            To comply with the new law, schools have now enforced the following dress codes. Not only is the color Aqua banned of course, but also mixing the colors of Blue or Green when in equal parts, for that has been suggested to imply the color Aqua. For instance, Blue and Green stripped shirts are not permitted, nor wearing a solid or mostly Green shirt with a pair of Blue jeans, as in implies an equal balance of Blue and Green. Such combinations of clothing have now been deemed by the Justice Department as political speech and fall within the bounds of the newest Patriot Act against encouraging or promoting willful dissent in speech, art, music, or “public displays,” in which clothing is specifically mentioned by name.

            Internet sites have been warned not to show the color Aqua unless it specifically is contained within a spectrum of other colors in a scientific or sociological context, such as a prism or rainbow, although rainbows themselves have recently come under question due to their alleged links to homosexual propaganda. To be safe, those displaying rainbows with the color Aqua in them (and even some with displays of rainbows without that color in them) have begun to choose other symbols entirely to avoid having to make new changes again in the future, should those too soon be deemed morally questionable. The President himself has suggested that that is a wise example of “forward thinking.”

            Due to the international nature of the Internet, this not only applies to US based web sites, but for the rest of the world as well. The State Department and the FBI have put out advisories to all other nations law enforcement agencies to instruct their nations own ISP's (Internet Service Providers) to make sure all of their customer's web sites are in compliance with the ban, or they could face legal action from within the US.

            Though not every country's local laws have as yet been changed to harmonize with the recent US ban, Secretary of State Notheleastta Nice has been quoted that those foreign nationals who do not comply with the ban, at the very least (hinting off-record that “all options are on the table” in regard to “other methods”), risk arrest if traveling to the US, or any other country with an extradition treaty with the US, if it can be proved that any web page's background colors, text colors, or images containing or displaying that illegal color were accessible from within the United States.

            DC Comics has been put in an awkward position by this ban. Its comic book hero, Aqua-Man, has become an overnight anarchistic symbol, now appearing regularly in inner-city graffiti, and also on illegal drug paraphernalia. Through massive campaign contributions to both political parties, DC Comics has managed to keep this character from becoming banned as well, successfully arguing that the term “Aqua” in the name is only in the sense of meaning “water” and that his shorts are not, in fact, Aqua-colored, but instead are clearly and markedly more Green than Blue. Oliver Stone has expressed interest in directing a new major feature film based on the character which purportedly contains dialog which hints at criticism of the ban. Since this rumor came about, he has fled to Europe and would neither confirm nor deny these reports.

           One could argue there is such a mechanism, a President who is supposed to be above politics and represent the people regardless of party and uphold the Constitution faithfully above all encroachment by fanatical Congresses attacks aimed at the publics civil liberties. I don't know how to begin to address the irony of that, how inverted and antithetical to that notion in practice the entire system has become, so I will only suggest when the President has a completely different view, opposing a libertarian view of Constitutional rights, there ought to be another branch to contain both him and Congress when both fail not only in their duties to enforce them, but from even recognizing them. The Courts come in too late and too little, and have been marginalized and politicized out of effectiveness at stopping irrational mania driven legislation, and at political supporters 'purchased' industry (self-) 'regulations.'

           And once it gets to that point, finally to the courts after massive arrests or becoming established in practice in regulatory and criminal codes for months or years, the Media, about as free to say the truth now as politicians, can effectively politicize the issues to pressure the courts to uphold whatever insane laws the Media has pressured the politicians to write in the first place.

            And the courts themselves have shown themselves willing to completely defy all reasonable arguments and interpretations of what is prohibited under the Bill of Rights, with almost nothing being sacrosanct anymore, even to be arrested without charge indefinitely without being publicly acknowledged, up to and including torture as a means of interrogation and having torture-induced testimonies of others used as evidence against you, not that you are guaranteed the absolute right to a trial in the first place, nor you or your lawyer be allowed to know what the evidence is! Even should one believe that such methods do not apply to American citizens (they do), but only potentially to the other six billion people on this planet to be 'legally' be treated this way by us, shows what “American Jurisprudence” and “Human Rights” have been defined by us as being now.

            It was Richard Nixon who put forward the notion that “If the President does it, it cannot be illegal.” Americans have become so ignorant of the nature of their own government to have allowed such an insane view 180 degrees opposed from every notion their government was built upon, not only to have allowed such a view to go successfully unchallenged, but to have it become the new mantra of those who have taken control, literally, over the government completely.

           Many millions Americans now accept that as a given. If the President does it, it can't be illegal. And thus with that propagation lies the end of democracy in the United States. The President clearly then can do anything, and this President has shown that almost nothing cannot be done, certainly not anything unthinkable even a few years ago.

          Alberto Gonzales, always the President's go-to guy for being told he can do anything, recently admitted he had at least on one occasion told the President there was something he could not legally do. What that was, he could not say.

           A recent trial in England gives an idea what kind of things this President has had to be told he could not do. Supposedly he needed his friend Tony Blair to inform him he could not intentionally target civilians, journalists at that, for specialized attacks as that would (a little too blatantly even for Mr. Blair) constitute a war crime.

           To expand upon Richard Nixon's words, not that the President may have articulated it as such yet, nor would he need to for his supporters, but it could be held now that he believes “if America does it, it cannot be a war crime.” There is no law, there can be no law, save what we or he says.

           This has effectively gone unchallenged at home, and the international community as a whole has not risen up to change it in this President's mind. We are as untouchable as we are undefeatable. Yet we are neither, and he and his financiers profit none the more, as when the more completely and totally he errs on our behalf. We as a people or as a nation are not untouchable, but legally he knows he has become so by our systems failures and our peoples moral cowardice as evidenced through its chosen representatives, to put up anything other than token and 'non-binding' resistance. The American publics opinions, and welfare, have never been more completely irrelevant to its governments representatives and its 'debates.'